Finding Paradise - Phu Quoc Island {Darrell}

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One last try for a windy day

Our last Day in Mui Ne started off very relaxed with a breakfast at the beachside restaurant: Vietnamese coffee, omelette, baguette, fresh lemon juice and homemade yoghurt. What a way to wake up! We had to pack up and move out of our room, but the kind owners of Suoi Tien told us we could use one of the open rooms to stay in until our 1am bus, free of charge.

We realised we had left a camera charger in Hanoi and after a frustrating hour trying to find somewhere with both power and a working internet connection, and struggling with bad telephone lines, we gave up and headed for the beach. The wind was just starting to come up, so as Cath very kindly went back to collect our camera, I launched my new kite to have another go at the wind. In the gusty wind it was just impossible to setup the lines (from a different kite) to suit the Hypertype, which meant a lot of time in the water, and not much riding. After a long walk back upwind it was clear that I was not going to be able to teach Cathy either in these conditions or with this kite. I took up Armando’s offer and borrowed one of Jibes’ rental kites, which had me up on the water for an hour. It was a gusty ride, but fantastic to be kitesurfing again!

After a coke at the bar and a chat with the other kiters while the sun slipped down behind the waves, we walked back down the beach to the resort. The evening was still warm and we took a dip in the pool to wash off the sand. After showering and getting changed in the room we were allowed to use (one of the best) we walked over to a restaurant on the beach front and ordered to ridiculously cheap plate of prawns. One pile was steamed in coconut milk and one barbecued. Both went down beautifully with cold 333 Beer. The room we borrowed to have a shower and wait for the bus turned out to be one of the best, and by 1am we were clean and ready to sleep as we boarded the bus bound for Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon.

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Flying light

Our night bus arrived with the first light in HCMC. Most of the store fronts were still tightly bolted, and the streets were mostly quiet except for a few vendors pushing carts with steaming pots of a broth made from pig stomach. We have by now learnt to try just about any local food, despite the way it looks, but despite the friendly sellers’ enthusiasm, the smells rising from the steaming pots of offal were too much to stomach at 6am. The bus ride had not been all that comfortable (not that we could complain while paying $4 for both accommodation and transport) and we were now just in need of something to wake us up gently.

We walked down streets that were wider than those of Hanoi, until we found a little café with a very impressive menu. Cath got a strawberry shake and a cheese & ham baguette, and I was super-excited to find that they served a bowl of fresh fruit and muesli - perfect! Apparently it’s because of Vietnam’s Fresh colonial legacy, but it’s great to be able to order baguettes and muesli for breakfast, unlike in Korea where it’s hard to avoid fried fish and spiced soup for breakfast. A great treat to be eating breakfast that’s easy on the stomach. We sat with a beer mug of Vietnamese espresso, slowly watching the city wake up. Uniformed children were catching lifts to school on the back of motorbikes, and old women were starting to open up the shops.

We walked towards the centre of HCMC, and found ourselves wandering through a beautiful park, between groups of people playing badminton and foot volleyball and practicing Tai Chi. After reading books and people watching for a while we caught a taxi to the airport and checked onto the afternoon flight to Phu Quoc island.

At the airport I managed to buy a kind of Vietnamese biltong. It was very sweet and a kind of curry spicy, disappointing, but then I wasn’t really expecting too much. An hour later we boarded a tiny little aeroplane with twin propellers. Cath was a bit nervous about getting sick as the plane bounced along the runway and into the air, but in less than an hour we were walking along the hot tarmac to the tiny arrivals room, where we were greeted by a group of locals jostling each other for the chance give their sales pitch about how great / cheap / close to the beach their resort is, to the limited number of tourists.

We soon found ourselves bumping Southwards out of the small town on a dirt road. The driver turned down a long driveway lined with a curious assortment of concrete animals, most far larger than life-size. We were given a nice enough bungalow for a decent price, but it seems that the owner of the resort certainly spends far more time building concrete animals than maintaining the property.

After crashing in our beautifully air conditioned bungalow for a 2 hour nap we pulled on our swimming costumes and went wandering along the long white beach. On one side we had an endless stream of resorts, varying in price and splendour, all with pasty tourists lying on deck chairs on the sand. On the other was the extraordinarily flat ocean, with wooden fishing boats floating along the horizon. The water was nice and warm, and we ended up walking about 2km past increasingly luxurious resorts until we came to a fence blocking our progress. The beach on the other side of the fence was clearly what had been left to the locals. The small palm shacks with plastic waterproofing were not a feature of the well manicured palm-lined beach on our side of the fence. Neither the barbed wire nor the grouchy guy on the other side seemed to welcoming, so we turned to stroll back and muse over this boundary between our paradise and the real world.

On the way back we stopped in at a dive shop, Rainbow Divers, in town. Thew woman in the shop was not much help, but did tell us that we'd be able to catch the dive instructors at the beachfront Rainbow Bar later in the evening. Aftere a good supper at the beachfront bar we found out that the dive guys were at a nearby resort and walked over to chat to them. It seemed like the weather might not be so good tomorrow, so we instead decided to use tomorrow to explore the island and postpone our diving for a while.

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Photos

Waiting for the wind
Not a bad place for reading a book

Buzzing around Mui Ne
Catching a lift between Jibes and our bungallow

A prop-per plane
The little craft that brought us to Phu Quoc

Sand and palm trees
How long can this place stay a secret from the mobs??

A 22km beach?
You're kidding me!

Cooling off
Even without the wind, the water's great

Rigging again
Getting ready to catch the afternoon wind

Comments

[Anne/Mom]

finding wind
come back to the Cape - mega constant gales here all Dec!!